State auditors examining attendance records from Cleveland schools

View full sizePlain Dealer fileThe state auditor is examining whether some schools manipulated data to improve their state test scores or attendance rates.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Ohio auditor's office is looking into attendance data at 15 Cleveland district schools as part of a statewide investigation.

The probe – spurred by revelations in Columbus, Toledo and a suburban Cincinnati district -- centers on whether districts have manipulated data on student withdrawals to boost their state test scores and attendance rates.

At this point, there is no suggestion that the Cleveland schools did anything wrong. Other Northeast Ohio schools also might be part of the same sample group that is being checked.

The auditor's office will not name the schools in this initial phase. But district spokeswoman Roseann Canfora told The Plain Dealer that auditors are looking at 15 Cleveland schools.

She offered the information to clarify that auditors had become involved since the publication of a story Monday in which she said the district had no indication it was part of the investigation. A subsequent editorial online used that information, and Canfora wanted to update it after learning that auditors had begun seeking records.

She would not comment further after district officials determined that the information is supposed to be kept confidential, she said. After consultation with the auditor's office, the district also said related correspondence requested by The Plain Dealer is not a public record under state law because of the investigation.

The 15 Cleveland schools and dozens of others are being examined in the first step of a process that could extend into next year. Ohio Auditor Dave Yost outlined his strategy to state school board members on Monday.

Auditors started by finding about 100 schools that had the highest percentage of students whose state test scores didn't count because they were withdrawn from the rolls at some point. Districts and schools aren't held responsible for the scores of students who aren't continually enrolled from October through state testing dates in the spring.

The Plain Dealer raised questions in 2008 about a high percentage of test scores being "scrubbed" away in Cleveland at the same time that the district managed to briefly improve its state rating to Continuous Improvement, the equivalent of a C grade.

Yost has not named the districts that had the most scrubbings in the recent data run, but he did tell the state board that 74 of the 100 schoolswere from two districts.

"We don't know if any of the 100 has done anything inappropriate or not," he told board members.

To broaden the sample, auditors "grabbed the next few" schools on the list and then added another 30 or so districts which were already in the middle of annual financial audits, he said.

Auditors have been digging into documentation at all those schools and, with the help of Ohio State University researchers, will use what they learn to construct a "risk model." Running data from all the state's 3,600-plus public schools through that statistical model will pinpoint which ones warrant further investigation, he said.

He plans to remove many schools from the "cloud of doubt" by publishing a list of schools that have been excluded from the investigation. Then his auditors will begin pulling student records at remaining schools whose districts have levies on the November ballot so that voters will be informed before they mark their ballots.

Eventually, the auditors will get to all the schools with questionable data. So far, the office has put in at least 7,000 hours of work on the project but can't tell yet how widespread data manipulation might have been.

Spokeswoman Carrie Bartunek said Friday, "In our preliminary look, we did not feel even the majority of schools have a problem."